Pretty straightforward question: What are the pros and cons of having separate area and facilities maintenance groups?

Scenario:
-Approximately 350 tradespeople in various crafts (electrical, mechanical, millwright, plumber, etc)
-Automotive components manufacturing and assembly with a very diverse equipment base
-Area maintenance = equipment and processes that are used in the actual manufacturing or assembly of the parts
-Facilities maintenance = infrastructure (boiler room, coolant systems, HVAC, buildings and grounds, etc)
-Area maintenance groups report directly to the Operations group, whereas the facilities group reports to plant engineering

Any and all opinions are welcomed - Thanks.
Bob

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Bob Ponza,

We treat our utilities equipment as equipment and use a mix of our in-house maintenance team and utility operators for those.

Our Facilities Group is concerned with building and grounds type stuff- not much equipment- drywall, painting, ceiling and floor issues, snow removal, landscaping, etc. The department is managed by internal people, but the work is contracted out.

It seems to work pretty well that way.

Bob
My opinion, separate, make two RCM groups they need to work out of the same office with one boss. One group area maintenance and the other group facilities. Why? In a large company the more people you have trained in reliability the better the company will run and a higher ROI . The boss can put it all together and make a big impact on equipment and facilities reliability, if he knows how.

In our company we prefer them to be togheter. Under our Maintenance Manager (reporting to the Engineering Drector) we have several Maintenance Supervisors in charge of the area maintenance (which include utilities equipment) and one Facility Supervisor who is in charge of buildings and grounds maintenance, including landscaping, housekeeping, pest control. Facilities work is mostly subcontracted while equipment maintenance is more in-house done.

It sound your plant is similar to ours and about the same size. Our area maintenance is called process maintenance. Our maintenance program goes back and forth with area maintenance under operations and plant engineering. I am not so much concerned about having the area maintenance and facility maintenance combined, as having plant engineering having control of area maintenance. Operation managers have a short-term view of maintenance. PMs and PdM are ignored and they are just concerned with getting parts to the assembly line.

In just the past few months we have gone back to plant engineering having control of maintenance. Since then, we have started new TPM programs, upgraded our CMMs, put new effort on past due PMs, and explored new PdM equipment. Operation should definitely not have control of maintenance.